Books like the dutch house

The Dutch House is a 2019 novel by Ann Patchett. It was published by Harper on September 24, 2019. It tells the story of a brother and sister over the course of five decades.

The novel was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

The Dutch House is a mansion located in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. It was built in 1922 by the VanHoebeek family, a husband and wife originally from the Netherlands who made their fortune in the tobacco industry. Cyril Conroy, a self-made real estate mogul, bought the mansion in 1946 to surprise his wife Elna. Their children, Danny and Maeve, were raised in the Dutch House. Elna dislikes the Dutch House. When Danny is 3 and Maeve is 10, she falls ill and abandons the family to work with the poor in India, later relocating to New York City. After their father dies, the two siblings are forced out of their home by their stepmother, Andrea. Left with no one else, the two siblings rely on each other. Maeve discovers a scholarship trust and uses it to send Danny to Choate Rosemary Hall, Columbia University and to Columbia Medical School. He finishes medical school despite being uninterested in working as a doctor, hoping to please Maeve. The novel is narrated by an adult Danny Conroy.